This is how Jeff Bezos makes decisions

Jeff Bezos, Amazon
CEO
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Images

• Jeff Bezos shared some advice on entrepreneurial
  decision-making on Thursday, saying he made all his best
  decisions based on instinct, not analysis.
• He also repeated a previous mantra that Amazon’s secret sauce
  is “obsessive compulsive” focus on the consumer, rather than its
  competitors.
• Bezos reminisced about the early days of Amazon, and said he
  still likes to treat things as if they’re small.

Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos is all about the heart when it
comes to decision making.

Speaking on Thursday at the Economic Club of Washington on
Thursday, Bezos described his attitude to business.

“I believe in the power of wandering,” he said.

“All of my best decisions in business and in life have been made
with heart, intuition, guts… not analysis.

“If you can make a decision with analysis, you should do so. But
it turns out in life that your most important decisions are
always made with instinct and intuition, taste, heart.”

Jeff Bezos remembers ‘like yesterday’ what it was like to hope to
afford a forklift

Bezos spoke more specifically to Amazon’s success, citing
customer care as its keystone. “The secret sauce of Amazon […] the number one thing that has made us successful by far
is obsessive compulsive focus on the customer as opposed to
obsession over the competitor.”

Amazon currently has about 500,000 employees, but Bezos said he
keenly remembers when Amazon was still small and had 10
employees. “It’s hard to remember for you guys, but for me it’s
like yesterday I was driving the packages to the post office
myself, and hoping one day we could afford a forklift.”

“I like treating things as if they’re small, you know Amazon even
though it is a large company, I want it to have the heart and
spirit of a small one.”

You can watch Bezos talking about his decision-making and
Amazon’s past at 8:36 in this video: